Alex Wakeford

Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford are professional filmmakers who met at the London Film School more than twenty years ago. Since then, they’ve been making films together.

Over recent years, they have made four feature-length films that have been distributed internationally, including Credo (2008, released as The Devil’s Curse by Lionsgate in the United States), a psychological thriller; Doula! (2010); and Freedom for Birth (2012), a documentary about human rights in childbirth.

Their most recent film, Microbirth (2014)—about how birth impacts a baby’s lifelong health—won the Grand Prix Award at the Life Sciences Film Festival in Prague.

There’s the obvious main event, which is the emergence of a new human into the world. But there’s another event taking place simultaneously, a crucial event that is not visible to the naked eye, an event that could determine the lifelong health of the baby. This is the seeding of the baby’s microbiome, the community of “good” bacteria that we carry with us throughout our lives.

The seeding of the microbiome, along with breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact, kick-starts the baby’s immune system and helps protect the infant from disease across a lifetime. Researchers are discovering, however, that interventions such as the use of synthetic oxytocin, antibiotics, C-sections, and formula feeding interfere with, or bypass completely, the microbial transfer from mother to baby. These bacteria are vital for human health, and science has linked an imbalance in the human microbiome with multiple chronic diseases.

Drawing on the extensive research they carried out for their documentary film Microbirth, authors Toni Harman and Alex Wakeford reveal a fascinating new view of birth and how microscopic happenings can have lifelong consequences, for ourselves, our children—and our species as a whole.